Will Smith: The Hollywood star yet to receive the plaudits he deserves – from critics or the awards circuit

You can see Smith as a modern-day equivalent to Cary Grant a generation ago, writes Geoffrey Macnab. Grant appeared in so many mainstream movies that reviewers took him completely for granted

Will Smith in ‘King Richard’ (2021) about Venus and Serena Williams (AP)

Will Smith is one of the frontrunners for a Best Actor Oscar this weekend for King Richard,in which he plays Richard Williams, the patriarch and self-taught tennis coach who guides Venus and Serena from tough beginnings in Compton toward glory on the courts. It’s a typical, bravura Smith performance. He has bulked up a little and gone to great lengths to copy the real-life Williams’ shuffling gait. He is charming and funny but also shows a ruthless single-mindedness, gatecrashing the country clubs of white America and defying an openly racist tennis establishment.

It is easy to understand what drew Smith to King Richard. The actor opens his recently published autobiography Will with a frank and shocking account of his own father. “Daddio” – as Will calls him – was a self-made Philadelphia businessman with a ferocious work ethic, which he drummed into his kids. He demanded complete respect, and was sometimes also a violent alcoholic. When Smith was nine, he saw his father hit his mother so hard in the side of her head that she collapsed and started spitting blood.

In his book, Smith, born in 1968, resists the clichés of the typical misery memoir. His voyage around his father is nuanced and ambivalent. On one page he will describe seeing his mother or brother being beaten up. On the next, he will hold forth about how “Daddio” inspired him in his journey toward the top of the Hollywood tree.

The autobiography opens with an account of how, when Will was eleven years old, his father forced him and his brother to build a new brick wall. It was a pointless and back-breaking task that took almost a year to complete. When the sons complained, the father yelled at them: “There is no wall. There are only bricks. Your job is to lay this brick perfectly. Then move on to the next brick …your only concern is one brick.”

That, of course, is how Smith has built his own career, one brick at a time. The bullied kid became a rap star. He then achieved mainstream celebrity through his role in the hit 1990s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Next followed a string of blockbuster movies: Bad Boys (1995), Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997). By the time he was 30, he was one of the highest paid movie stars in the world – a status he has maintained ever since.

Not that his childhood insecurity ever went away. “I have always thought of myself as a coward,” he admits with his usual disarming frankness. His coping mechanism was becoming so finely attuned to people’s moods and behaviour that he could fit in anywhere.

It is striking how often Smith plays chameleon-like characters or con artists in his films. One of his first notable screen performances was as the hustler passing himself off as Sidney Poitier’s son in Fred Schepisi’s Six Degrees of Separation. His charisma was self-evident. Audiences reacted in the same way to his character on screen as Flan and Ouisa Kittredge, the wealthy Manhattan couple played by Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing taken in by him in the film. The Kittredges were so enraptured by his grace, eloquence and humour that they simply refused to believe he was a crook.

The star often gives the impression that he can turn on the charm at will. In his 2015 comedy crime-thriller Focus, he was again cast as a con artist, this time playing opposite Margot Robbie as his protégé. The budget was bigger and locations more spectacular, but the actor’s schtick was still the same. He was so likeable and effervescent that his victims seemed to half enjoy it when they realised they had been swindled.

Smith has had two previous Oscar nominations, for Michael Mann’s Ali (2001), in which he played Muhammad Ali, and for Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), in which he was cast as a homeless salesman with a young son. Nonetheless, when it comes to awards, he has seldom been regarded as heavyweight contender. That is partly to do with his choice of projects. He excels in comedies and action movies. He has rarely appeared in the dark, introspective dramas that Academy voters tend to favour. He is not the Daniel Day-Lewis type of actor who will immerse himself in a role, sometimes becoming unrecognisable.

When Smith has taken on more earnest assignments, for example when he played Dr Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-American medical expert who tried to blow the whistle on traumatic head injury in American Football in Concussion (2015), the box office results have been disappointing. He has therefore remained under-appreciated by critics.

You can see Smith as a modern-day equivalent to Cary Grant a generation ago. Grant was so dapper, such a man about town and appeared in so many mainstream movies that reviewers took him completely for granted. Film historian David Thompson, in his A Biographical Dictionary of Film, later called Grant “the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema,” but Grant was dismissed as a bit of a lightweight during his lifetime.

Like Cary Grant, Smith doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves. When you read in the trade press that he received $100 million for appearing in Men in Black 3 and that Netflix (for whom he appeared in sci fi movie Bright) is now paying him up to $35 million a role, you can’t help but think he has earned more than enough not to worry about reviews and awards.

Nonetheless, King Richard is a reminder that, at his best, Smith is a superb screen actor. He brings his trademark amiability to the role but, for once, he also digs deeper. It must help that when it comes to playing a relentless patriarch who drives their kids to achievements beyond their dreams, he has plenty of experience upon which to draw.